Klimatfrågan
Rädda planeten eller rädda ekonomin?
George Monbiot är tveksam till om politikerna förstått problematiken. De mål de sätter upp är kontraproduktiva.
Is there a way out? Could we abandon the fossil fuel economy without provoking a blistering backlash? Two things are obvious. We need a global system, and the current one, the Kyoto protocol, is bust. It sets no cap on global carbon pollution, its targets bear no relation to current science and are unenforceable anyway, it contains loopholes and get-out clauses wide enough to sail an oil tanker through.
Monbiot har bytt åsikt om personliga koldioxidkonton, de fungerar inte och det baserar han på den oberoende tänkaren Oliver Tickell.
Tickell proposes setting a global limit for carbon pollution then selling permits to pollute to companies extracting or refining fossil fuels. This has the advantage of regulating a few thousand corporations - running oil refineries, coal washeries, gas pipelines and cement and fertiliser works for example - rather than a few billion citizens. These firms would buy their permits in a global auction, run by a coalition of the worlds central banks. Theres a reserve price, to ensure that the cost of carbon doesnt fall too low, and a ceiling price, at which the banks promise to sell permits, to ensure that the cost doesnt cripple the global economy. In this case companies would be borrowing permits from the future. But because the money raised would be invested in renewables, the demand for fossil fuels would fall, so fewer permits would need to be issued in later years.
Tickell calculates that if the cap were set low enough to ensure that the world became carbon neutral by 2050, the total cost of permits would be about $1 trillion a year, or roughly 1.5% of the global economy. The money would be spent on helping the poor to adapt to climate change, paying countries to protect forests and other ecosystems, developing low-carbon farming, promoting energy efficiency and building renewable power plants.
Läs gärna hela artikeln för bättre sammanhang på länken.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/01/climatechange.carbonemi
Med finanskrisen riskerar det att bli ekonomin som räddas snarare än planeten, befarar Andreas Carlgren.
http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/artikel_1868259.svd
Monbiot igen:
Pavan Sukhdev, the Deutsche Bank economist leading a European study on ecosystems, reported that we are losing natural capital worth between $2 trillion and $5 trillion every year as a result of deforestation alone. The losses incurred so far by the financial sector amount to between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion. Sukhdev arrived at his figure by estimating the value of the services - such as locking up carbon and providing fresh water - that forests perform, and calculating the cost of either replacing them or living without them. The credit crunch is petty when compared to the nature crunch.
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Here are some of the reasons why people fail to prevent ecological collapse. Their resources appear at first to be inexhaustible; a long-term trend of depletion is concealed by short-term fluctuations; small numbers of powerful people advance their interests by damaging those of everyone else; short-term profits trump long-term survival. The same, in all cases, can be said of the collapse of financial systems. Is this how human beings are destined to behave? If we cannot act until stocks - of either kind - start sliding towards oblivion, were knackered.
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the financial crisis provides us with an opportunity to rethink this trajectory; an opportunity that is not available during periods of economic success. Governments restructuring their economies should read Herman Dalys book Steady-State Economics.
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Å så gillar jag hans liknelse med Påskön!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/14/climatechange-markettur
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